Eastern Mennonite University

Eastern Mennonite University
Undergraduate Council
November 12, 2007
#5
CC301/302

Present: Kim Brenneman, Spencer Cowles, Vi Dutcher, Cathy Smeltzer Erb, Joan Griffing, Cyndi Gusler, Doug Graber Neufeld, Nancy Heisey, Elroy Miller, Patrick Reynolds, Gloria Rhodes, Deirdre Smeltzer, Mary Sprunger, Arlene Wiens, Lester Zook
Absent: Marie Morris, Sara Roth, Lindsey Grosh
Guest: B J Miller

Reporter’s Note: I would like to take this opportunity to thank the faculty for making the beginning of today’s meeting the most amusing of all those attended thus far. Who knew donuts played such an important role in the life of the council? Kudos to Deirdre for keeping it together whilst everyone was otherwise occupied when the donuts arrived. Despite the shaky and comical beginning, the meeting did result in important discussions as reported below.

1. Nancy shared scripture and a prayer.

Announcements: On Nov. 17 the following events will take place:
A Christmas Concert by the Music Dept.
JCPS alternative training to violence
Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director of Human Genome Project will speak
This is International Education Week

2. Follow up on the UG FTE “Implementation Plan”

A. Report from President’s Cabinet/SPC
Nancy shared the report provided by Marie. The President’s Cabinet met on Oct. 24 and drafted a consensus agreement. Though Cabinet minutes have not yet been through the final approval process the draft currently states that the Cabinet will receive the Implementation Plan as presented and appreciates the difficult work by faculty. The Cabinet acknowledged, however, that more work needs to be done to meet prioritization goals, but advised faculty to move forward with the Implementation Plan. The Cabinet will look at further areas for potential reduction, but will do so with faculty input. Cabinet took action to limit sabbaticals to six per year, but without quotas to divisions (e.g. undergraduate, graduate, or seminary). Should there be a year with less than six requested/awarded sabbaticals; the “shortage” may be carried over to the next year. It was suggested by Undergraduate Council that the Provost and/or Dean should track this and advise faculty for planning purposes.

B. Report from UG Faculty/Student Ratio Meeting
Deirdre distributed a report of the meeting and highlighted some areas of importance. She reviewed the operating assumptions, provided background, and stated that departmental and external hours will be accounted for separately for a better picture of activity. “With this delineation, the Student:Faculty ratio target for the department portion is 14:1. This ratio is based on an undergraduate student FTE of 876. Though this will be evaluated annually, we will base the student FTE on a rolling average in order to be less sensitive to yearly flux. To achieve the 14:1 ratio, we should have 62.6 undergraduate faculty FTE. Multiplying this by 24 SH, we obtain a target for department load hours of (roughly) 1509 SH. This is our target, at least through the completion of the prioritization process in Fall ’09. By way of comparison, for 2005-06, the undergraduate department load hours totaled 1835. The 07-08 total UG load hours is 1778. Together with the Implementation Plan reductions, this means nearly two FTE cuts still need to be made to achieve the low of the Implementation Plan; four FTE to achieve the high of the plan.

3. Global Village Curriculum c/o Beth Aracena
Beth distributed information pertaining to the changes GVC will be experiencing in the coming years. Many areas of interest have been deliberated, including but not limited to:

Beth moved on to the draft of the GVC, which uses Micah 6:8 as the focus. Students will be required to complete a minimum of 30 SH under six categories, which are: Christian Faith, Communication, Cross-Cultural Learning, Reconciliation Arts, Social Justice, and Creation Care. Some feel that “literature”, which resides under Reconciliation Arts, could be reconsidered. The Language and Literature department opposed dropping the foreign language to 0-3 SH, as outlined in the proposal. They would like to see one year each of French and Arabic. The foreign language component under the Cross-Cultural Learning category could be offered during the cross-cultural experience, but this would mean a redesign of many specific cross-cultural offerings. Some feel the program needs to be redesigned anyway to involve less traveling within country by students and more time located in one area to foster local culture study, history, religion and language. This would mean faculty leading the cross-cultural trips would have to adhere to more requirements, which would affect the planning of the experience.

For the benefit of Faculty Assembly, it was decided that GVCC will report that the Community Learning and Writing Intensive designates are still in progress. Currently, ongoing support for CL has not been identified. Planning and development of WI courses have received more attention in committee meetings.

4. Student Satisfaction Inventory – B J Miller
BJ recognized that it is difficult to take class time to fill out this survey, as it takes approximately 30 minutes. She asked for suggestions on how to get a good response without being disruptive to the schedule. After various possibilities were discussed, it was decided that surveys will be completed by the students on the first day of class of spring semester for majors with named forms.

Recorder,
Cheryl Doss